Rotor & Wing Magazine :: Public Service :: Fire

IT WAS WITH GREAT REGRET THAT I learned of the midair between two media helicopters July 27 in Phoenix. My thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the four men involved. Although I didn’t know either of the pilots, I took this as a personal loss because they were professional helicopter pilots and therefore my peers. In my 39 years in this industry, I have met only a handful of pilots that...

An Arizona helicopter pilot and a technology company are taking steps they hope will prevent accidents like the mid-air collision in Phoenix, Ariz. last month where four people were killed. The system’s aim is to...

The deaths of two New York City firefighters last month has fire union officials clamoring for a dedicated fire helicopter in that city. The two firefighters were killed Aug. 18 after they became trapped in a major fire at the...

I CAME ACROSS AN INTRIGUING story back in June. Seems a tribe in Brazil’s Amazon had dropped its longstanding tradition of avoiding much interaction with the modern world. The reason? Members of the Karitiana tribe had discovered that researchers that had come among them in the 1970s and then again in the 1990s apparently had been bilking them. The culprits sought samples of the Karitianas’...

CIVIL Effective Aug. 30, the FAA was to reconfigure the Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) around Washington, changing it from what many pilots have described as "Mickey Mouse ears" to a rough circle centered on the DCA VOR. The original ADIZ was placed around Washington in 2003 in response to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and encompassed the Class B airspace of National...

PUBLIC SAFETY/FIRE With more than 40 major wildfires still raging in the western United States, officials from the National Interagency Fire Center in August faced a shortage of helicopters to battle the blazes that had already consumed 830,000 acres of land. As of early August, more than 200 rotorcraft and many fixed-wing aircraft were participating in the...

COMMERCIAL/UTILITY The Russian operator UTair Aviation has sent an Mil Mi-6 to help contain forest fires in Greece. The helicopter, which can carry 15 metric tons (33,000 lb) of water, was sent in response to the Greek prime...

THE END OF THIS MONTH MARKS THE SECOND ANNIVERSARY of what has proven to be a remarkable event. On Sept. 26-29, 2005, more than 260 representatives of manufacturers, operators, regulators, safety investigators, and military services gathered in Montreal for the International Helicopter Safety Symposium. Spurred in part by a chronic accident rate among U.S. emergency medical service operators and a renewed...

Atlantis Demonstrates Virtual Task Trainer Atlantis Systems International of Brampton, Ontario, gave attendees at the Airborne Law Enforcement Assn.’s 37th Annual Convention a sample of virtual reality with their Helicopter Virtual Task Trainer. Looking like a cross between an amusement park ride and a full-motion flight simulator, the trainer puts the pilot and a set of flight controls atop a...

EMERGENCY MEDICAL SERVICE is a primary mission for some and secondary one for most military helicopter units. As an aid to civil disaster planning officials, I offer here the different U.S. services’ doctrinal medic, corpsman, and swimmer capabilities. Air Force pararescuemen (PJs) attend grueling training starting with a 10-week indoctrination course. Graduates go on to dive, survival, and military...

In an effort to continue to improve helicopter education nationwide, Helicopter Foundation International (HFI), a Helicopter Association International (HAI) affiliated organization, is bringing its Professional Education Series to the West...

LATELY, WE’VE BEEN WATCHING "The Devil Wears Prada" on cable in the McKenna house. My son is keen on Anne Hathaway, the centerpiece of the fashion show that is that movie. I’m not going to lie to you. I enjoy Ms. Hathaway’s scenes, too. But it’s that scene-stealing chameleon of an actress, Meryl Streep, that has me bordering on a movie review here. She plays the...

Correction Our story on future rotorcraft powerplants included a discussion of Fischer-Tropsch fuels drawn largely from a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency fact sheet ("More Efficient, More Sources," May 2007, page 34). Through an editing error, the attribution to the EPA was deleted, leaving readers with the incorrect impression that the material was based on our own knowledge of the subject...

Well known as an outspoken proponent of safe, innovative search-and-rescue and firefighting techniques, LEE BENSON recently retired as senior pilot of the Los Angeles County Fire Dept. In addition to spending his retirement writing for Rotor & Wing, he plans to continue that advocacy by consulting with U.S. and international helicopter operators on their activities and fleet and equipment requirements...

PRODUCTS/MISSION EQUIPMENT Eurocopter has won U.S. and European certification of a night-vision capable cockpit for the EC145. The manufacturer appears to be the first OEM to offer an option for night-vision-capable cockpit instruments and lighting for a civil aircraft off the production line. Aircraft with...

PUBLIC SERVICE/FIRE Eurocopter is seizing the opportunity of the wildfire season on the Mediterranean island of Corsica to assess the firefighting capabilities of the EC725. In league with the manufacturer, France’s interior ministry rented an EC725 from the French air force’s 1/67 "Pyrénées" Sqdn. in Cazaux, near...

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